'Synching' computers

[Rathji]

I have 2 computers, one for school and one for home. My school one is small, good for taking notes and light for carrying around. My home one is a 17" gaming laptop that is a few years old, but it is more powerful and more comfortable to use when I am at home.

Problem is when I get home and sit down at my desk, all my files from notes or assignments are on my school laptop and I want them on my big laptop.

I am planning on buying an external network drive to backup my stuff on, as well as give me more storage since both my computers only have 80 gigs of HDD, and I was wondering if there was a product out there (software, hardware, or a net based subscription service) that I could use to easily sync a set of folders between each computer. For example if I was at school and downloaded a file to "My Documents", I would want it for use on my home laptop later, without downloading it again or manually transferring the files back and forth to the folders.

[Traditional_Ale]

I'm sure there is.

But for 5 dollars I say get a Flashdrive and just take the 10 seconds to transfer.

[Rathji]

Thats what I am currently doing, but it is annoying because I tend to forget a file here and there and need to repeat the process.

Ideally I want to be able to go to a website, log in and click sync, or run a program on my school one that backs it up to the external drive, then repeat for the second computer and know my files are all the same on both computers.

[Traditional_Ale]

Originally Posted by Rathji

Thats what I am currently doing, but it is annoying because I tend to forget a file here and there and need to repeat the process.

Maybe make a folder called "SYNC" and then just overwrite all the old files every time you transfer? That way you just drag and drop the one folder a few times a day.

[Bobblehead]

There's a MS power toy that may work for you.

SyncToy 2.0

[photon]

SyncToy is a good place to start.

If you want something more comprehensive, check out DropBox or Syncplicity. They work over the Internet so you can sync your computers anywhere.

[Phanuthier]

There's always Google

[calculoso]

My solution thus far: USB stick + DSynchronize.

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/dsynchronize.html

DSynchronize is a freeware app that takes a source and destination directory (can do bidirectional syncs too) and evaluates changed files, newly added files, etc. It can even do a preview and let you evaluate what it is going to do. It can even create backups of the files it replaced.

[Rathji]

I am trying out Drop Box. I am pretty sure this will do exactly what I need with little or no effort.

CP comes through again.

[Russic]

I've been using dropbox and have been very impressed.

[photon]

Only thing about Dropbox is you can't specify a bunch of different directories.. Syncplicity you can, but there's no Mac client yet for Syncplicity.